Journal of Asia Pacific Business Innovation and Technology Management 2 (3) 93-110
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Understanding Issue Dissemination and Arrival Patterns on Supply-Chain using Network Analysis and Social Media Corinthias Pamatang Morgana Sianipar, Gatot Yudoko School of Business and Management, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Jl. Ganesha 10 (Gedung SBM-ITB), Bandung 40132, Indonesia
ABSTRACT The increasing of supply-chain scale which caused by borderless business partnerships can result in less monitored chains, a condition in which predicting and detecting issues in supply-chain must be strengthened. Issues are resulted from gap between supply-chain business practices and stakeholders expectations, whether they come from related affairs or not. Issues which have any direct impacts on a supply-chain can bring risk and then cause a crisis if they are not managed by firms. This paper aims to investigate potential issues arrival patterns which disseminate through the nature of supply-chain as a network and the use of social media among people in supply chains. Then, a framework also proposed to give guidelines on how to understand incoming issues arrival before developing any prevention plans. The proposed patterns and framework are developed based on literature survey which is combined with valuable issue samples to build a comprehensive discussion. This paper concludes that issues can come through several patterns before they become direct risk and cause crisis in supply-chain. Before firms develop risk management or do any crisis prevention, they must transform themself based on the proposed framework to have an agile response of any small changes which have potential escalation into any other big and important risks. By looking at the limitations of previous approaches which tend to treat this topic only as business practices, this paper throws a light from academic perspective on how to develop sharp understanding about issues dissemination and arrival patterns on supply-chain. © 2012 APBITM Society. All rights reserved. Keywords: Supply-chain, issue management, crisis prevention, network analysis, social media I. INTRODUCTION Supply-chain can be quite large. The practical field of supply chain management is constantly changing, as the competitiveness of international companies is more and more dependent on their capability to produce and deliver customized products and services fast and efficiently all over the world (Halldorsson, et al.,
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2007). The globalization emerges the borderless world, and then increases the opportunity for supply-chain to be much larger than before. It accelerates the growing of supply-chain scale. The increasing of supply-chain scale can result in less monitored chains, a condition in which predicting and detecting issues among supply-chain parties must be strengthened. All issues in supply-chain are defined as point of conflicts between supply-chain and its related audiences. Commonly, issues are resulted from gap between stakeholders’ expectations and supply-chain business practices (Legester and Larkin, 1997), whether they come from related affairs or not. Unfortunately, supply chain now exists in an unpredicted world. Anything can come on suddenly without being able to be calculated or predicted in advance. The world is always changing and evolving, and it keeps going without stopping. The new world is far evolved from the past is going through changes that have almost no pattern. Even small changes that we previously did not have to care about could suddenly escalate into a big and important thing. Handy (1990) stated that “the only prediction that will hold true is that no predictions will hold true.” Therefore, he suggested that we should begin to get used to think smart and out of the box. New way of thinking that has become the world's demands to face new challenges. Great people are generally unable to distinguish between truth and ignorance (Gladwell, 2005). As a result, they always cheated and looked innocent in reading the situation. The problem is, great people tend to kill their instinct by arguing that intuition is not something that cannot be proven scientifically. They intentionally fled and hid behind the rational logics, in-depth analysis, secondary data and primary, and all things considered scientific (Khasali, 2009). The phenomenon of unpredictable changes in the world is also seen as supply chain managers have to adapt and deal with many issues which are widespread in the community. Because the changes are less likely to have a definite pattern, they tend to treat issue management as a business practice (Wartick and Heugens, 2003). If an issue closely linked to things that matters to the supply chain, then they will see the potential risks that may arise. If the issue is widespread and the managers cannot manage the risk, then it could become a crisis which hit the businesses they run (Jaques, 2010). Thus, managers should strengthen their intuition so they can accurately and quickly read the situation. Growing issue should be read even before the issue has a direct risk to the business practices conducted by the supply chain. Although issues dissemination have almost no definite pattern, but all issues which have possibilities to reach a supply chain must have its entrance so that finally hit the supply chain, from both outside and inside. The outside entrance example can be found in a conflict story between Oxfam (an NGO) versus Starbucks. Oxfam says that Starbucks is depriving farmers in Ethiopia of $88m a year, by opposing the Ethiopian government's efforts to trademark three popular varieties of local coffee bean (The Economist, 2006). In other hand, a newest example of inside entrance is the bad impact that hit Apple, Inc. because a negative issue of its component manufacturer in China, Foxconn, about low level labor wealth and health (Apple, 2012; Tippin, 2012). That issue also brings deeper understanding about the impact from the use of social media among people inside as well as outside supply chain. Apple-Foxconn case was caused by one Foxconn staff who said about small internal information through social media. It means that network also being developed with boundaryless information limitation between people using social media. It can also be meant that the use of social media needs to be understood as another issue dissemination media. 94
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Based on those facts, management should understand how issues disseminate and read the ongoing situation even when the issue has just appeared. Such efforts which are made long before an issue reach supply chain will give more time for the managers to be careful and nimble in adapting their risk management and crisis prevention. Because of those facts, this paper attemps to describe several issue entrance possibilities into a supply chain to increase the agility of supply chain managers to manage supply chain risks and do crisis prevention efforts. Potential issues arrival patterns into a supply chain need to be understood through an appropriate framework. This study will answer the following research questions: RQ1. How issue can disseminate and arrive into a supply chain? RQ2. How can a company predict the arrival of an issue before it reaches the supply chain? II. LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Supply Chain and Network A central question of the theories of the firm is whether a firm can more efficiently produce inputs in-house or acquire them in the market (Mentzer, et al., 2004). Mentzer, et al. (2001) define supply chain as a set of entities (eg. organizations or individuals) directly involved in the supply and distribution flows of goods, services, finances, and information from a source to a destination (customer). The core determinant of a good supply chain is explained by Pienaar (2009) who defines supply chain as “a general description of the process integration involving organizations to transform raw materials into finished goods and to transport them to the end-user.” Both definitions stated that the role supply chain is to add value to a product –throughout goods can be changed through processing– by transporting it from one location to another. Supply-chain is demand fulfilment processes, and which can be a source of competitive advantage (Jüttner, et al., 2006). The connections and nodes in a supply chain achieve functions that contribute to the value of the goods transporting through the chain and thus its achievement (Janvier-James, 2012). The real competition on global market is no longer between company versus company (Christopher, 2010). Because businesses no longer compete as stand-alone entities but rather as supply chains, the competition rather takes on a supply chain versus supply chain. Although it shows that the nature of supply chain is the network among organizations in a supply chain, some supply chain networks may consist of several similar organizations. The good example is the supply chain of iPhone product. P.K. (2011) noted that in mobile handset market, Samsung and Apple are two biggest companies which have biggest market share. In fact, he revealed that Samsung are the supplier of 26% Apple iPhone components. It means that one of Apple’s supply chain has a cross connection with Samsung’s supply chain. The connection may be different in other cases, but it makes sense when considering that many suppliers are also connected with other organizations that might cause a conflict of interest in the supply chain. To solve problems like that, some big focal companies such as Ford and Toyota try to maintain their control of the supply chain through the closure of outside access to their supplier relationship management. They build an independent supply-chain by themself, develop high level secrecy of confidential datas. However, even though they've done it all, they still have to deal with the possibility that maybe one of their employees (intentionally or not) leaks their internal conditions. 95
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Figure 1. Example of supply-chain network
2.2 Social Media and the Honeycomb Network in supply chain should also be understood as connection between entities with no exception about connection between people through technology. Many researchers including Hongtao (2002), Frohlich (2002), Robinson, et al. (2005), and Fiala (2005) show the same intention to believe that humans –and then companies– will be significantly and seamlessly connected by investing in technology. For the example, Rodriguez, et al. (2007) note that current supply chain information technologies (IT) allow managers to track and gather intelligence about the customers purchasing habits. In this fast-growing internet technology era, social media show up and become a new way to uniquely connect many people through World Wide Web (Sianipar, et al., 2012). Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.” Short, et al. (1976) explain the social media regarding the media-related component. They state from the perspective of social presence theory that media differ in the degree of “social presence” they allow to emerge between two communication partners. Furthermore, Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) said that social presence is influenced by the intimacy (interpersonal vs. mediated) and immediacy (asynchronous vs. synchronous) of the medium, and can be expected to be lower for mediated (e.g., telephone conversation) than interpersonal (e.g., face-to-face discussion) and for asynchronous (e.g., e-mail) than synchronous (e.g., live chat) communications. In fact, an analysis of the academic literature related to the relationship between supply chain and social media finds few contributions (O’Leary, 2011). However, as organizations enter a new era of global competitiveness, e-SCM becomes a tremendous catalyst for achieving and maintaining a competitive advantage (Folinas, et al., 2004). Ashcroft (2010) lists the potential use of social media in several business 96
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areas, such as advertising, customer/sales support, technical support/service, brand/reputation monitoring /management, internal/external communications, business process re-engineering, and continuous improvement. Above facts show that social media can become an effective communication media between persons, including persons in supply-chain. Media where people can communicate each other about everything which they think a news is an interesting topic. So, beside RFID (Kamaladevi, 2010), supply-chain cannot ignore social media importance. Table 1. Functional Building Blocks of Social Media. Adapted from Kietzmann, et al. (2011) Building
Social Media Functionality
Blocks
The extend to which users ...
Implications of the Functionality
Identity
... reveal themselves
Conversations
...communicate with each other Conversation velocity, and the risks of starting and joining
Sharing
...exchange,
Data privacy controls, and tools for users self-promotion
distribute
and
receive content
Presence
...know if others are avaliable
Relationships
... relate each other
Reputation Groups
Content management system and social graph Creating and managing
the reality, intimacy and immediacy of
the context Managing the structural and flow properties in a network of relationships
...know the social standing of Monitoring the strength, passion, sentiment, and reach of users others and content ...are
ordered
communities
and brands or
form
Membership rules and protocols
Kietzmann, et al. (2011) provide the social media honeycomb of seven functional building blocks. These building blocks are neither mutually exclusive, nor do they all have to be present in a social media activity. Each block allows executives to unpack and examine: 1. a specific facet of social media user experience, and 2. its implications for firms Although it is clear that social media is very powerful, many managers are unable or maybe reluctant to develop strategies and allocate resources to engage effectively with social media. Consequently, in particular area like customer relationship, firms regularly mismanage or even ignore the opportunities and threats presented by creative consumers (Berthon, et al., 2007). One reason behind this ineptitude is a lack of understanding about what social media are, and various forms they can take (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). 2.3 Crisis, Risk, and Issue Management Supply chain must keep its business alive in a world where corporate reputations are fragile and where crises seem to be occurring more and more. Globalization and outsourcing have created many supply chain risks as 97
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well as benefits (Johnson, 2006). The run of products and the flow of information are both faster than before (Tsai, 2006). Examples from the practical world suggest that incentive can motivate chain members to satisfy customer needs and increase their total profit (Simatupang, et al., 2002), but critical to have several critical business practices. Jaques (2010) found several evidence from previous author which stated that crises have been conceptualized both as an event and as a process. Roux-Dufort (2007) noted that event approach still being the mostly developed approach in crisis management literature, while the process approach had been less developed and used, both in practice as well as theoretically. The biggest difference between both approaches is about the way to predict or detect the ongoing situation. Event approach focuses on the inhibit examination of trends and incidents which lead to triggering of a crisis, but the process approach extend the analysis process back before the triggering event and deeper into the preceding phases. Crisis has its “incubation” period (Turner, 1976). Turner also characterized incubation period as “the accumulation of an unnoticed set of events which are at odds with the accepted beliefs about hazards and the norms of their avoidance” (p. 381). It means that management must monitor crisis far before it’s going to have risk. Reynolds and Seeger (2005) stated about the existing of “pre-event stage.” Every crisis has its predecessor, from a small issue which developed into a large and risky to the supply chain.
Figure 2. Sequence of issue, risk, and crisis
Jaques (2007) divided the pre-crisis phase into two distinctly defined constructions –crisis preparedness and crisis prevention– through his integrated model. While crisis preparedness aims to incorporate three clusters of advance activities –planning processes, systems and manuals, and also training and simulations– to make the organization better prepared to respond operationally to future crisis, crisis prevention attemps to accomodate three further clusters –early warning/scanning, issue and risk management, and emergency response. The early warning/scanning is directly linked to issue management. Issues management is exist for almost 30 years, and as noted by Jaques (2008) it is firstly known in management literature after the introduction of the term “issue management” by Howard Chase. However, it has not attracted the widespread attention even if it has been adopted by some major corporations as a powerful strategic planning tool. Issue management as a corporate activity lies at the heart of reputation management, public affairs, and corporate communication (Wartick and Heugens, 2003). It has dual fragile position. Practicioner tend to assume that stakeholders always attack the firms constantly, but academician tend to see that issue management is small but frighteningly and widely dispersed over business, management, and journalism schools around the world. Both opinions, however, believe in same fact that 98
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issue management was applied only as business practices and not in a mature major discipline. Based on the above reasons, the issue scanning should be pulled further back even before an issue posing a risk to the supply chain. The detection of the issue should be able to give more time to management so they can study the issues spreading before relaying a warning to the directors of the organization in the supply chain. Issue management should be raised as a discipline which can be studied even though it is difficult to predict. 2.4 Sustainable Supply-Chain and Triple Bottom Line Talking about issue in supply chain cannot be separated from the effort to sustain the supply chain itself. The notion of sustainability has been evolving and is increasingly understood to encompass considerations of economic viability, as well as environmental sustainability and social responsibility (Jamali, 2006). Such business and management desire to change the world through social, environmental, and economic values (Menon and Menon, 1997) which is called as “triple bottom line” (TBL). Robinson (2000) stated that since 1980s corporations began to move away from their focus on economic responsibility and made strategic effort in response to environmental pressures and the changing of societal expectations. All organizations in supply chain must balance their TBL conditions, their strategy to capture issue and counter threats, and their capability to implement such integrative strategies. Norman and MacDonald (2004) noted that focal companies such as AT&T, Shell, and British Telecom have used TBL terminology in their press releases, annual reports and other documents as have dozens of smaller firms. Simchi-Levi, et al. (2002) stated that a corporation’s supply chain is generally defined as the series of companies, including suppliers, customers, and logistics providers that work together to deliver a value package of goods and services to the end customer. It means that supply chain managers should inject the togetherness of organization in their supply chains with the mindset of TBL. In social line, social responsibility concepts in the supply chain are increasing in importance (Markley and Davis, 2007), and then applied as CSR approach. CSR in supply chain exists in several activities such as procurement (Razzaque and Hwee, 2002) and labor practices (Roberts, 2003). It is also divided into five primary categories –environment, diversity, human rights, philanthropy and safety– which were established by Carter and Jennings (2002). On the other hand, a number of leading US companies have significantly increased their competitiveness by engaging in such environmental performance-enhancing activities (Markley and Davis, 2007) although the environmental impact of supply chain has received relatively little focus in academic area. In order to solve that problem, companies try to build tight collaboration with academicians with a mutual benefit for both sides. Ford had shown good example since they began to ship car parts in recyclable plastic containers rather than cardboard (Ford.com, 2007). It was the result of Ford’s Material Planning and Logistics Group in collaboration with Georgia Institute of Technology to gain environmental prestige. The last line, economic, is the common issue which is handled as business nature. Many efforts such as reducing total inventory levels, decreasing transaction costs, react more quickly to changes in the market, etc. are the essential things to boost supply chain performance. As stated by Markley and Davis (2007) that managers can improve their management performance by first understanding how their decisions affect the 99
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purchasing, storage, handling, and asset recovery activities throughout their organization. In short, it can be concluded that TBL has its strong position to maintain good issues around a supply chain. Supply chains which integrate social and environmental resources and knowledge may be more difficult to imitate, thus leading to economic sustainability (Carter and Rogers, 2008). Integrative efforts should be applied by organizations throughout supply chain to ensure the good adaptation of company’s strategic decision to supply-chain’s mission. 2.5 Theoretical Framework Triple bottom line ensures the notion that managers have to be smart and carefully deal with any issues which may arise in the supply chain. Issue should be scanned before it become risky. Because the nature of supply chain as networks, the risk can be detected and grouped as one of TBL from the supply chain networks. Managers must also consider the interactions network that take place using social media, whether among the people within their supply chains, between insiders and outsiders, and between the people outside a supply chain. Early warning is the target of supply chain managers to do stronger crisis prevention, so this paper will focus on how to understand issue dissemination and do an early scanning of issues arrival.
Figure 3. Theoretical framework
III. METHODOLOGY This study use literature survey and combined with several valuable issue samples surrounding Apple, Samsung, and Foxconn case. Apple and Samsung are two biggest phone and tablet manufacturers and top market leaders which have one same supplier, Foxconn. The first section explains about the background what this study address. Existing management literatures have noted several cases which show the questions related to issues surrounding a case. Then, the second section reviews literatures of each idea. The result is the theoretical framework which is used as the guidance in understanding the early issue scanning. The following section is used to discuss the issue dissemination and arrival pattern based on the theoretical framework. It is started by preliminary reviews on several important ideas, and then several hypothetical issue dissemination/arrival patterns are developed. That section also provides a framework how to predict the issue around supply chain to increase the supply chain agility in adapting its risk management and crisis prevention. Last section will collect the main idea of this study into several conclusions. Additional section 100
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will provides research implications. Finally, further researchers can extend or develop new research based on this study. Ideas can be found in that section to give initial insights. IV. DISCUSSION 4.1 Issue Dissemination and Arrival Patterns on Supply-Chain The first understanding of supply chain is about its network across many organizations. Most of the benefits identified on the supply chain derived from the practice of information sharing (Papakiriakopoulos and Pramatari, 2010). Intersection and proximity between supply chains should be considered more carefully as the main entrance for issues to reach a supply chain. To get easy understanding, the supply chains need to be simplify as interactions between a chain as single entity to another chains. Every single chain is coordinated by a focal company, as common.
Figure 4. (a) simplest pattern (b)(c)(d) entrance on two supply-chain
The first entrance possibility is in a supply chain, the simplest internal entrance (Figure 4a). The origin of an issue is one of organizations in a supply chain. Because information are flowing throughout supply chain, whether forward or backward, the issue is disseminate to the customers as well as customers’ customer and suppliers as well as suppliers’ suppliers from the origin organization. A good example is the connection between Apple and Foxconn (Tippin, 2012). The second possibility come from a single supply chain which is included in two different and longer supply chains. The single supply chain may be located at the beginning of the longer supply chains or in the end of them. If the single one is located in the beginning (Figure 4c) or conversely (Figure 4b). Issue is come from single supply chain, and then disseminate throughout the longer chains. When it reach the branching point from a single chain to the longer two, the issue arrive and enter both longer chains separately. The 101
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effect may be different based on the business characteristics of each longer chain or the type of relationship between those chains. Samsung and Apple conflict about the Galaxy Tab design (BBC News, 2011) is an example of economic-based issue of this pattern. The third possibility (Figure 4d). Two chains have their characteristics, but some time they intersect each other. The meeting point in the middle of X-pattern between these chains is the entrance point for issue to enter the second chain from first chain, vice versa. The issue first disseminate in from an organization in first chain throughout that chain, and then arrive to the second chain through the intersection point. This issue commonly exist between chains with very different business characteristics but have one or more related activity along those chains.
Figure 5. Combination pattern
The most complex and confusing possibility is the combination of those three pattern (Figure 5). Unfortunately, this is the common condition of supply chain. For example, an issue is come from an organization of single supply chain. That single entity is intersect with another supply chain in a meeting point, but the other second chain is also behave as the beginning of two supply chain. The issue will arrive to the third and fourth chain through a long journey. This type of issue dissemination and arrival could come in Apple, Samsung, Foxconn, and any other iPhone manufacturers’ supply chains if they did not do any crisis prevention (P.K., 2011; Dignan, 2012). 4.2 Indirect Networks and Social Bridge Three previous patterns are explained based on direct connection in a supply chain or between supply chains. In fact, entities in between supply chains can be connected indirectly. Commonly, this type of network exists when two or more supply chains have same area along their chains or only in several part of chains (Figure 6). Fortunately, indirect network can be understood through the same pattern with direct network types. Indirect (4a) pattern exists when two supply chains have identical business area. If the related-business area 102
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exist in several part of two supply chains, it will form an indirect (4b) or (4c) pattern. The indirect (4d) pattern will be formed between two chains which have indirect network through one organization in each supply chain. The most complex pattern (Figure 5) are formed by three or more supply chains which have (4a), (4b), (4c), and (4d) patterns among them.
Figure 6. Indirect networks
The organization’s own ability to regularly feed back insights gained from social media monitoring into supply-chain processes would be an example of an internal strength or weakness (Montalvo, 2011). Among indirect network, also exist connection between people in supply chains. Table 2. Social bridges through social media Building
Potential Social Bridges
Blocks
The users tend to ...
Identity
... do some self-promotion of their own identity even
if it also limited by privacy control
Conversations
... reveal some informations depend on the conversation velocity even if they know the risk
Sharing
... exchange, distribute, and receive content because each person can manage their content
Presence
... search about another person existence, their information, or condition around them
Relationships
... relate each other based on same properties or conditions between them
Reputation
... know the social standing of others and the strength or sentiment to users or brands
Groups
... be registered in social media communities which have different protocols than supply chain
Social media is what began as a set of tools for friends to stay connected has evolved into a means for businesses to communicate internally and externally with probably no formal connection (Remidez and Jones, 2012). Fernando (2010) stated that social media technologies in their very nature are extensions of the 103
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human faculty of exchange and collaboration. For example, one fact can not be avoided that may be two General Managers from two different supply chain have same favorite music star and registered as fans in same social media page of that star. If two persons are connected through social media, it means that they also have private connection between them. Thus, it develops a social bridge between these two persons. Social bridge which come from informal connection through social media can be traced from user’s experience in specific facet of social media (Table 2). Using the honeycomb framework to understand social facets on and general characteristics of social media sites is important. However, the facets of social media are also different in several social media sites which are commonly used as business official media such as Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, or Foursquare. These sites have contrast functionality related to their characteristics. When examining the social media ecology, it quickly becomes clear that many sites have struck a careful balance among the different blocks of the honeycomb (Kietzmann, et al., 2011). Some focus more on identity, some more on sharing, et cetera. Table 3. Different facet characteristics on specific social media sites. Adapted from Kietzmann, et al. (2011) Building Blocks
Identity
Conversation
Sharing
Presence
Relationship
Reputation
Groups
Facebook YouTube LinkedIn Foursquare
These specific characteristics are useful to predict a unique issues entrance through a social media site. Connection through Facebook tend to have tight relationship. Two person who are connected by Facebook will exchange identity, do several conversations, see the presence of another user, and build individual reputation. YouTube provides tight content sharing, and also bring conversations which can be a way to build reputation and groups among users. Professional connection through LinkedIn emerges tight identity self-marketing. It also develop relationship and reputation among its users. Foursquare’s users tend to have curiosity about other users’ presence, the identity, and relationship among users in same real area. By analyzing the seven building blocks in each specific social media site, firms can monitor and understand how social media activities vary in terms of their function and impact, so as to develop a congruent social media monitoring strategy based on the appropriate balance of building blocks for their community (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Kietzmann, et al., 2011) 4.3 Framework for Predicting Issue Dissemination and Arrival Between organizations in a supply chain, there is an opportunity to integrate their effort in early scanning of an issue. The most important thing is about information flow between organizations. A firm may cover their secrecy, but it should not cover its TBL to another organizations among a supply chain (4a). By contrast, if a firm is included in two or more supply chain, secrecies between its chains are the most important thing to prevent bad issue dissemination wich can enter through that frim as branching point (4b)(4c) or intersection 104
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(4d). When combination pattern (Figure 5) exist, the key factors are the policy, ethics, and agreement (Markley, et al., 2007) among organizations in a complex supply chain. Policy can detect issue as a violation of standard rules. Ethics is a key factor as a guard for the supply chain does not violate the characteristics of the norms of business they run. Agreement is the start point to build a supply chain. In an agreement development, related organizations must include the exchange information of TBL. The policy of TBL should also be written before it all began. The people communication activity through social media is also need to be considered. Companies need to find creative ways to tap the power of the trusted social community (Parasnis and Baird, 2011). Every statement has its impact in company valuation (Azzadina, et al., 2012). Although privacy is the barrier issue to control the use of social media, supply chain managers should spread good work value on how people should filter their word before its published in social media, or just limit the viewer to the chosen persons who have interest on the post content. Not all information should be accessed by outsiders, so the virtual forum or network will be an advantage to exchange the internal information that critical for the previous as well as following chains without breaking the company secrecy policy. Getting connectivity right is a serious challenge (Fawcett, et al., 2007).
Figure 7. Complex networks All above possibilities can build a complex connection between supply chains. Direct, indirect, and social bridge actually exist among supply chains in reality. Figure 7 shows how complex the connections. That figure also shows how long an issue disseminates from a supply chain and arrives to another chains and finally published by news media, then shocking all related supply chains. When supply chain is started, monitoring plays the most important role to predict issue arrival (Figure 8). While focusing on the effects of information sharing between supply chain partners, a firm must develop a supply chain map along its supply chain and any other chains which have intersection (Karkkainen and Kemppainen, 2007), whether direct or indirect relation with firm’s chain. News is the most effective source to watch issue dissemination. News can be spreaded through conventional media such newspaper or modern 105
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ones such as website or social media. Although news is not definitely or always true, but issue will remain spread out and hit the supply chain if any news that might relate to the supply chain did not examined well.
Figure 8. ∞ framework for understanding issue arrival
The requirement to take such an holistic and systemic view of the supply chain acts as an impediment to more extensive implementation (Power, 2005). All environment, social, and economic issue must be examined simultaneously to develop a nearly unlimited map of potential issue dissemination. Sustainability needs to be the main focus which will set in motion the TBL sustainability dynamic (Smith and Sharicz, 2011). Due to technological developments which support the spread of illegal issues, even the slightest of issues that arise should be considered if a firm do not want to be late in the crisis prevention. V. CONCLUSIONS Unpredicted world really changes how supply chain should predict an issue dissemination or arrival. Although an issue is still doubtful, supply chain should not let it go and spread “outside” supply chain. When encountering specific issues, extra task demands often emerge for staff, and thus they have a relatively limited amount of time to learn the knowledge needed to effectively plan for and respond to certain problems (Wang, 2011). TBL bottom lines exist in all supply practices, it means that an issue may disseminate and enter a supply chain if there is a connection –even small one– between supply chains. Triple bottom line ensures the notion that managers have to be smart and carefully deal with any issues which may arise in the supply chain. Sustainable supply chain should be pursued at any time supply chain exists. Issue should be scanned before it become risky. Issue management is the optimal option and identifies several areas where issue management can contribute to crisis prevention (Jaques, 2010). The key activity to do an issue prediction, detection, or scanning, is monitoring. Because the nature of supply chain as networks, the risk can be detected and grouped as one of TBL from the supply chain networks. Issues should be monitored between organizations as well as between persons in a supply chain, between supply chains, or between a supply chain and outsiders, which exist through direct as well as indirect connection or modern medium such as social media. Supply-chain management must also consider the interaction network that take place using social media, whether among the people within their supply chains, between insiders and outsiders, and between the people outside a supply chain. However, monitoring 106
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cannot be done well if the policy, ethics, and agreement between organizations and/or people in a supply chain are not appropriately applied. Beside that, the emergence and spread of an issue can be seen in the tendency of news flow among media. The most important point exists on the vigilance response from the firm to any small changes around its supply chain. Early warning is the target of supply chain management to do stronger crisis prevention. VI. IMPLICATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH It is clear that issue should be predicted or detected far before it’s become risky to a supply chain. Although this paper has presented an understanding of issue dissemination based upon literatures and valuable issue samples, it cannot be claimed that the proposed framework is the only way to understand and further study issue dissemination. In fact, this paper offer the proposed ∞ framework as only one interesting way of looking at the issue dissemination in supply-chain. Therefore, future research is strongly encouraged to challenge and/or refine the view of issue dissemination. In addition, how this understanding of issue dissemination fits into the larger area of national supply-chain management needs to be further explored. Further research must extend this study in practical area especially among high-risk business, better in specific cases separately because every high-risk business has its own issue even though the categories are always based on TBL. This study also need to be extended through development of an issues prediction or detection tool which includes the characteristics of several businesses such as mining or construction that have many critical issues surrounding them. The tool may include ∞ framework which is explained above. Another study may develop new methodology to evaluate issues prediction in real time. REFERENCES [1] Apple (2012). Fair Labor Association begins inspections of Foxconn. Apple Press Info, 13 February 2012. Retrieved on February 16, 2012 from http://goo.gl/eqofc [2] Ashcroft, Jeff (2010). Social media in the supply chain. Presented in Supply Chain Management Summit, San Fransisco, 13 April 2010. [3] Azzadina, I., Sianipar, C.P.M., & Nuur’aini, E. (2012). Measuring the direct and significant influence of emotional intelligence competencies to entrepreneurial characteristics. Proceedings of IICIES, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 16-25. [4] BBC News (2011). Technology: Samsung redesigns Galaxy Tab after Apple's sales ban. BBC News, 17 November 2011. Retrieved on March 26, 2012 from http://goo.gl/X2e89 [5] Berthon, P., Pitt, L., McCarthy, I., & Kates, S. (2007). When customers get clever: Managerial approaches to dealing with creative consumers. Business Horizons, Vol. 50, No. 1, pp. 39-47. [6] Business.view (2006). Oxfam versus Starbucks, The Economist.com, 7 November, 2006. Retrieved on March 15, 2012 from http://goo.gl/jMDf8 [7] Carter, C.R., & Jennings, M.M. (2002). Logistics social responsibility: an integrative framework. Journal of Business Logistics, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 145-80. 107
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